


Castiel, Angel of WoW

by theficisalie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theficisalie/pseuds/theficisalie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas is a programming student who goes by his handle in World of Warcraft, Dean Winchester is a construction worker who fixes up his car at night. Gabriel works at a coffee shop and wants to climb Sam Winchester like a tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You _so_ need to get out more.”

“Uh huh.”

“I mean, you need to see the light of day once in a while. You remember what that’s like, right? The sun? Big yellow ball of gas up in the sky? Sheds ultra violet rays on the people of this lovely forested earth? Gives them that dark shade of skin that’s just delicious to eat whipped cream off?”

Cas sighed. “Of course,” he said. He wasn’t listening. He could _hear_ Balthazar, of course, as one could _hear_ the annoying fly buzzing around the room, that pesky insect that just loved to land on his ear, like seriously, fly, I would love it if you put your grimy, buggy hands all over my _ear_. But he wasn’t really paying attention, because conversations with Balthazar, even if you _were_ listening, were generally so one-sided that a simple nod of the head could keep him waxing for hours about how hot the girls on campus were the second it got warm out.

If he were _listening_ to Balthazar, he might have noticed the warning signs of the blonde boy’s voice dropping an octave into Cas-you-aren’t-listening-you’re-the-worst-best-friend-ever territory, but if he were _listening_ to Balthazar, he _wouldn’t_ be _looking_ for whatever goddamned angle bracket he’d missed that was making his website look like a pile of floating crap instead of a sophisticated site where people could buy the workings of a local carpenter.

Maybe it wasn’t an angle bracket. Maybe he’d messed something up in the site’s CSS. If he had to adjust the vertical alignment (uselessly, and out of desperation, he might add) one more time he was going to _scream_.

“Cas?”

Right. Balthazar. Cas blinked hard to clear the lines of black type from his vision and swiveled his chair to the side. “ _What_?” he snapped.

“You weren’t listening to a word I was saying, were you?” Balthazar asked. He was already pouting, which meant they were long past Cas saving the conversation by saying “Of course you’re right.”

“Uh.” Cas said. “I was.”

“What was the last thing I said?”

Cas squinted, trying to simultaneously read Balthazar’s face and scrounge through his memory. “......Something about girls,” he tried.

Balthazar raised an eyebrow. Which meant _nothing_. On a scale of one to ten, where one was angry and ten was content, eyebrow was a solid five. “And how....” Cas said, scrunching his eyebrows together in intense concentration. What was it that Balthazar usually talked about? “How...I should.........meet some?”

The air was tense for a hot second and then Baltazar’s face relaxed into everything’s-about-me territory, which meant Cas was gloriously, miraculously safe. “So you were listening. Good. There’s a party tomorrow--”

“Fine,” Cas said.

“Really?” Balthazar asked, surprised. “Great. Fantastic. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Good,” Cas said. “Now please leave.”

“You’re so dull,” Balthazar said. “All you do is hunch over that laptop of yours and read...” He peered over Cas’s shoulder and grumbled. “What even is that?”

“HTML,” Cas said. “And it’s all going wrong so would you leave me alone?”

“Isn’t that the easy one?” Balthazar asked.

“Out!” Cas shouted, hugging his laptop to his chest. “Out, out, out!”

“Fine,” Balthazar said. “You’re a pitiful creature, I hope you know that, James. Real people go outside and know how to fix cars and things.”

“You don’t know how to fix cars either!” Cas said. “And don’t _call_ me that, only my mother calls me that.”

“God, you’re a weirdo,” Balthazar said. “It’s a good thing you’re my best friend or I would long since have disowned you for your hermity ways, _Castiel_.”

“Whatever,” Cas said. “You play WoW too, _Balthazar_.”

Balthazar sniffed. “Well. Aren’t we mean today?”

“I’m not _mean_ ,” Cas said. “I’m _frustrated_. Now leave, _Regan_.”

“Okay, okay. And I would like to call for a truce on the legal and embarrassing names.”

“Begone,” Cas said.

*

“And then, _then_ , she said it was, and I quote, ‘too green for her tastes’. Green, Gabe! Seafoam, pine, granny smith green!”

“Aw, babes,” Gabriel said. In a perfect world, his facial expression would have read ‘sympathetic about Cas’s predicament’ but this was, of course, Gabriel. So it was just a smirk.

Cas glared as hard as he could. “This is literally the pinkest website I have ever made. And I didn’t even get to finish the Woodsman’s site because it wouldn’t fucking _align_.”

“Listen,” Gabe said, his hands busy on the espresso machine. He had his hair slicked back in his favourite imitation of a 1940s greaser and he was only sweating a little bit beneath his annual November mustache. A customer squeezed past Cas, and they shot him a glance that was clearly infused with distaste. In response, Cas smiled. The only thing that bugged the Normals more than direct eye contact and a friendly smile from a glasses-wearing stranger who swore loudly in hipster coffeeshop was all of that from someone who was talking in a language they didn’t understand.

“I mean, I think I know the difference between #00FF00 and #FF00FF, don’t you?” Cas asked sweetly.

The girl, whose hand was poised and ready to accept her large-whatever-shots-of-something-flavoured-coffee-with-steamed-milk made a face. “Are you talking to me?”

“Don’t even get me started on the header, whose clickable Div menu she wanted changed every 5 fucking seconds,” Cas said, still maintaining eye contact with the girl, who nervously tugged her oversized toque down over her ears. She fiddled with her fringe when Cas said: “It’s just frustrating, you know, to show someone two identical images and have them say that one of them is better than the other in terms of colour and spacing.”

“Sorry about him,” Gabriel said to the girl, interrupting Castiel’s very well-thought-out argument re: the merits of the rule of thirds in basic web design. Gabe slid the girl’s pretentiously large drink across the counter, somehow managing to make the motion more provocative than should be legal. The girl practically melted when Gabriel shot her his smirk. It was a well known fact that Gabe’s smile, when combined with his sparkling hazel eyes, could send any person with any semblance of a libido to their knees.

“Image tags, am I right?” Cas said to the girl when she shot him a parting glare. Cas pouted at Gabriel when she finally let the door slam shut behind her. The coffee shop was empty, except for the kid in the corner who always claimed to be writing a romance novel: surely his friend from grade school could stand to give Cas a free drink every now and then.

“What’s that look for?” Gabe asked. “Come on, Cas. You can’t just expect girls to fawn over you if you don’t give them a little somethin’ somethin’.”

“Gross, don’t say ‘somethin’ somethin’’, what are you, a character from Chuck’s novel?” Cas said, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. “And for your information, girls like smart guys.”

“Okay yes, but they like guys who know a lot about practical things. Not dudes whose greatest recent accomplishments include reaching level 61 with their secondary warrior-elf-mage characters. And before you say it, no, making a website for hormonal women who want to find natural solutions for their menopausal mood swings doesn’t attract cute boys either.”

“Come on. Girls play games too, Gabe. This is 2012. Gender equality is basically a thing, now,” Cas said.

“Well you’re the one putting yourself on unequal footing, here,” Gabe said. “For example, what’s this?” He waved a condescending spoon, gesturing at Castiel’s entire person.

“Be more specific,” Cas said.

“That sweater,” Gabe said. “It’s more blue than your eyes. And those pants have probably never been washed.”

“They’re _jeans_ ,” Cas said. “They don’t need to be washed. And this sweater is cool! It’s November, I needed something warm. It’s wool, for your information.”

“It’s disgusto-el-barfo,” Gabe informed him. “Snowflakes? Are you being serious here? And get contacts, would you? You gotta repress your nerd when you’re out in public, Cas. It would help, also, if we stopped using our handles out in public.”

Cas stared.

“What?” Gabe asked. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Are you being serious right now?” Cas asked. “Because I will call you Spencer so hard--”

“It’s fine,” Gabe said. His left eye only twitched once at the name, for which Cas had to give him some credit.

“Make me a latte, Spencer,” Cas said.

“See, I’m totally cool with it,” Gabe said, though he was visibly recoiling. “It’s fine. I’m like Superman but of being cool. You should try it.”

“Try what, Spencer?” Cas asked. “Try doing your job as both a barista and a best friend, Spencer?”

Gabe’s nose scrunched up, and did not come back down. “Yeah,” he said.

The door to the café twinkled, and a gust of cold wind rushed into the small room. Cas leaned just a little bit closer to Gabe. His mouth was, no doubt, twisted into a menacing, slightly evil smirk, but hey. He wasn’t a _good_ warrior-elf-mage in his spare time. “Your apron’s crooked, _Spencer_.”

“Oh, your name’s Spencer?” one of the two guys who’d just walked in said.

Gabe clapped his hands over his ears, his face a mask of horror. He looked like he’d just seen a ghost, like the colour might have been shocked right out of him, like....well, he looked like a Spencer in that moment.

“No!” he said, laughing nervously and holding a “wait one minute, would you?” finger up to the guys who’d just come in. Then he turned to Cas, who he grabbed by the electric blue wool collar. Cas yelped, and tried to struggle, but when Gabriel was mad he was as strong as a troll, which was to say, very strong. “I take it back,” he hissed right into Cas’s ear. “If you call me Spencer again, I will vomit.”

“That’s not very foodsafe,” Cas whispered back.

“Fuck you,” Gabe hissed. “If you don’t completely embarrass me in the next two to five minutes I will make you a free vanilla latte, okay?”

“Deal,” Cas squeaked, when Gabe practically threw him back over the counter.

“Aha,” Gabe said, turning a beam towards their two customers. “Sorry about that. Um, no, my name is Gabriel.”

“Oh,” the tall one of the two said. He looked super sympathetic and only a little bit like a lion crossed with a moose. “Right. Well, I’m sorry, I mean. You don’t have a nametag.”

Gabe sucked in a breath through his beam. Cas knew for a fact that Gabe did have a nametag and that the nametag read _Spencer_ , and so he kept it well-hidden beneath the collar of his perpetually plaid shirts. “Haha, yep. No nametags for me! I’m Gabe, though, really. So. You can call me that.”

“Right,” the tall one said. The guy behind him grumbled something in a dark and gravely voice and the tall one cleared his throat. “Well, uh. Can we have coffee? And--ow! A slice of pie. I was _getting it_ , Dean.”

“Hard to tell with you,” ‘Dean’ grumbled. “I’m sitting down.”

“Two coffees,” Gabe said, almost painfully. Cas frowned, looking from the tall, greasy-haired customer down to Gabe, whose hands were almost shaking as they pushed buttons on the cash register. “And a slice of pie. That’ll be five dollars. Do you want ice cream on the pie?”

“Yes,” the tall customer said, at the same time as Dean, who was lingering at the bar with the cream and sugar said: “Hell yes.”

“Sorry about him,” the tall guy said, pulling out his wallet. “Five dollars exactly, huh? That’s funny.”

“Haha!” Gabe said. “You’re Sam, right?”

“Uh,” moose man said, his green eyes wide. “Yeah. How did you know?”

“It’s on your debit card,” Gabe said, laughing nervously.

What was going _on_ here? Gabe was fiddling with the debit machine and taking a suspiciously long time to ring through this purchase, the tall Sam guy was scuffing his shoes on the floor... Cas was transfixed. He’d seen Gabe flirt before, sure. Gabe flirted every waking moment of his life. But this was different. There was something very real about the way Gabe was smarming around behind the counter.

Cas didn’t even notice that the other man had moved around to stand near him until Gabe brought the pie over to Cas and put it down on the counter. Cas was confused, still sort of cloud-headedly thinking about how Gabe must be into this Sam guy if the way he was sashaying about meant anything. When a pair of fingers appeared in his line of sight and snapped, Cas nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Move aside,” Dean said, his voice a low growl that seemed to settle into the ground beneath Cas’s feet. He sort of recoiled, moving to the side in such a hurry that he banged his hip on the sharp edge of the counter.

“I, uh, sorry,” Cas stammered. Okay so there was a reason he preferred instant messages and facebook chats to real life conversations, especially with people he didn’t know. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Did I scare you?” Dean asked.

Cas rolled his eyes in a flawless imitation of someone who had totally not just been super startled and also someone who had not just gazed into a pair of really adorable green eyes framed by long lashes. “No.” Someone who was definitely not eyeing that chiseled jawline or internally sighing about how dirty the fingers that had just snapped in front of his face were.

Dean chuckled. “Just need to get my pie and I’ll be out of your way, dude.”

 _Dude?_ Did people still call each other that? “Right,” Cas said. That’s who the pie was for. “Gotcha. It’s cool, man.” That was how jocks talked. Cas could get the hang of this.

Dean raised his eyebrows, pursed a pair of strangely perfect lips, and nodded. “Okay.” He grabbed the pie, gave Cas a suspicious glance over his shoulder and then him and the moose man retreated to the farthest corner of the café. They were talking in voices that were too low for Cas to make out what they were saying, but Sam did look over at Cas one time, smiling sort of quickly.

“You can’t have him, he’s _mine_ ,” Gabe hissed, from where he was apparently ducking down behind the counter. He seemed to be peering at Sam from his vantage point.

“Are you serious right now?” Cas asked.

“What? The tall one. I’m going to climb him like a tree later, and you can just get in line.”

“I want my latte,” Cas said, resolved not to look over at Dean.

Gabe was silent for a moment and Cas sighed. “Are you going to wait until they leave?”

“Uh, yep,” Gabe said.

“Bring it to my place when you’re done here,” Cas sighed. “I have to go give some books back to the library. You _are_ coming over after work, right?”

Gabe glared momentarily at Cas before fixing his gaze back on Sam. “Obviously.”

“‘Cause we’re raiding with or without you,” Cas said. “But seriously, Angels need you. We’ve been getting ready for our second taking of Onyxia’s lair forever.”

“I fucking know, I’ll _be there_ ,” Gabe hissed. “Now stop talking about World of Warcraft around the attractive construction boys, would you?”

“Whatever you say,” Cas said. “Bring Monster when you come, it’s going to be a long night.”

“You’re horrible and embarrassing,” Gabe hissed as Cas turned to go.

Cas smirked into the collar of his blue sweater. He noticed that Dean looked up from his pie momentarily when Cas opened the door, to leave, but there was barely enough time for Cas to take a bus to campus and back as it was, so he didn’t even stop to wave goodbye.

*

__  
“I don’t get it.”

“What is there to get?”  
 _  
“I mean, this is Gabe we’re talking about, right?”_

“Anna --”  
 _  
“No, no, I mean, he’s great, he’s the best, I love him like a brother, you know that. But it seems like he never really gets attached to the people he's attracted to, right?”_

“No, yeah, it is pretty weird. But you didn’t see the way he was looking at this guy.”  
 _  
“GUY?”_

“Anna, we’ve been over this.”  
 _  
“You so did not say it was a guy. I demand pictures. Castiel, if you are even a shred of a decent human being, you will deliver them posthaste.”_

“You just want me to be the creepy guy in the coffee shop who takes a cellphone picture of everyone who walks through the doors, is that it?”  
 _  
“Absolutely. Oh, hey. Ten o’clock. Where’s Gabe?”_

“He should be here...” Cas looked up from his latest baby, a script that would organize the files in his portfolio by size and type so he could easily access any part of his portfolio from the various FTP programs he used. Sure, he could have just put everything in folders originally, but he had created the site in such a rush so he could show it to his favourite professor that it had completely slipped his mind at the time. And he could use the code to organize any sites he got hired to clean up, too, so it would definitely be useful in the future. “Yeah, it’s nine, he should be here by now.”  
 _  
“Well, I’m getting off Skype then. Tell the lazy bastard he’s late whenever he gets there.”_

“Done,” Cas muttered.

As though he had been summoned by Anael’s wrath, Gabe sprung through the door to Cas’s dorm, grocery bag in hand. “Yes, yes, hold your applause, I’m here.”

“You were almost late,” Cas said. “Anna’s already mad.”

“Pish posh,” Gabe said. “It took me longer to get here than expected. Namely because they were having a sale on Cheetos? So. You know I had to stop by and buy out their stock.”

“And yet I see only one thing of Cheetos,” Cas said, peering into the bag that Gabe had passed to him.

“Obviously I made Balthazar carry the others,” Gabe said. “Also he brought some kind of healthy snack. Like. Crackers or protein bars. I am horrified.”

“Agreed,” Cas said, accepting the latte that Gabe handed him next.

“Good god, you are a demon from hell for making me carry all of this,” Balthazar said from the hall.

“It’s your fault for taking the heavy bags,” Gabe said, from where he was already supine on Cas’s floor, his laptop booting up on his chest. “He wanted to impress the lesbians in the red civic.”

Balthazar huffed his way into Cas’s room. “They weren’t _gay_ , Gabriel. They winked at me.”

“The blonde one had her arm around the redhead,” Gabe said. “And also they come into my shop and make out. Pretty sure they’re gay.”

“They’re at least taken,” Cas said, gulping the latte down as quickly as he could. He really needed to get a head start on the wealth of energy drinks in the room if he was going to stay awake for another good day and a half.

“You are coming to the party tomorrow, right?” Balthazar asked. He delicately picked his way through Cas’s room, setting himself up at the foot of Cas’s bed.

“Of course he is,” Gabe said. “He wouldn’t miss it for the world. Sam’s going to be there.”

Cas looked at Gabe, who’d levered himself off the floor in order to search for one of the foam mattresses that Cas had propped up in his closet for occasions such as this. The game was loading, Cas’s headset was next to him, and he had enough cheetos around him that he thought he might have an orange heart attack later on. “Sam? The tall one, right?”

Gabe paused, with his hand inside the closet. “The tall _one_?”

“What?” Cas asked. “In comparison to the other one, Sam was really tall.”

Somehow, Gabe was managing to set up a mattress on the floor, blankets included, while maintaining eye contact with Cas. “Uh huh,” Gabe said. “And what did the other one look like?”

“Shorter, green eyes, dirty hands-- wait why are you looking at me like that?”

“You were looking at his hands?” Gabe asked.

“Who is this fellow?” Balthazar asked.

“I, what? He put them in front of my face,” Cas said.

“This fellow,” Gabe said, digging in his backpack for his headphones, “is Dean Winchester, brother of Sam Winchester, _clearly_ the object of young Castiel’s pining in the very near future.”

“Young? We’re the same age, you ass,” Cas muttered. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Is he coming to the party, too?” Balthazar asked. He made a face as he sorted through the bags of cheetos on the bed to get to one of his weird, condensed protein bars. “If so I think you should definitely make out with him. You need to get laid.”

“That’s true,” Gabe said.

“Is not, I’m fine,” Cas said. “And I didn’t even do anything, why would you say something like that? I don’t even know who he is?”

“I bet you want to get to know,” Gabe muttered.

“You want his dirty hands all over you,” Balthazar agreed.

“Ugh,” Cas muttered. He shoved his headphones onto his head and put five cheetos in his mouth. “Fuck all of you.”  
 _  
“Oooh, who got Cas mad? Gabriel, you’re late. Balthazar, you too.”_

“Not late, had to take a detour for cheetos, which, by the way, you’ve got all over your sweater, Cas,” Gabe said cheerfully.

Cas yelped and brushed his sweater off as viciously as he could. The orange mess remained. “Now I’m going to have to wash this, I hate you,” he snapped.

“You do not, you hate yourself.”

Balthazar sniffed when Cas threw his sweater at Gabe. “Is Uriel coming?”  
 _  
“He’s meeting us there, you three are tardy. Him, Zachariah, Lucifer, Michael, Raphael and Rachel already left. Uriel and Rachel went with them so they wouldn’t start the raid without us.”_

“You know they would have, too,” Gabe muttered. “We need our own group. We’re all level 80 with our mains anyway, we could train some rookies, maybe get some new blood in here.”  
 _  
“That would be nice.”_

“Lucifer and Michael, man,” Balthazar said. “They’ve been really off lately.”

“Shouldn’t have picked such high up names,” Cas agreed.

“Whatever, we’re stuck with them,” Gabe said. “For now, at least. We need ten players for this raid. I hear it’s going to be good.”

“Tap us into the main group, Anna,” Cas said.

“Yeah, let’s rock this bitch,” Balthazar said.

 _“Gross,”_ Anna said. _“Did you guys throw cheetos at him, I hope you threw cheetos at him.”_

“Guys,” Balthazar said. “Don’t.”

Gabe smirked, winding up his arm. “And so it begins.”


	2. Chapter 2

“James?”

Cas’s head shot up from where he’d been leaning his chin on his right hand. His left hand, by force of habit, pressed CTRL+TAB twice. He did a quick monitor scan before looking back up to his teacher, heart pounding. “Um, yes, right. Uh, sorry, Professor.” He scratched the nape of his neck and glanced around. Everyone was staring at him. Fuck. “I, uh, could you repeat the question, sir?”

The professor walked around to peer over Cas’s shoulder at the EditPlus window he’d just switched to. “I asked if you had anything to add to Martin’s proposal about the advantages of object-oriented programming?”

Cas looked at Martin, who was sniffing like a snobby aristocrat. What a smug bastard. You write one baby script in this class and everyone thinks they’re God on earth. The kid had probably just cited from the first page of their textbook. If there had been an online version of the class in this semester for Cas to take so he could finally finish his fucking degree, he would have been on that like butter on toast.

“Sorry,” Cas said. “You mean aside from being a more efficient way to write code, thanks to classes and inheritance, the way it leads to higher productivity, greater quality of software all the while costing less to maintain? Or did he get to the part about how you can have multiple objects existing at the same time, or how mapping and partitioning is both possible and easy, or--”

“Okay, yes, you’re getting a little far ahead there, James,” the professor whose name Cas had already forgotten said. He laughed a bit nervously as Cas smirked at Martin, and then droned to the front of the classroom. The rest of the students, some muttering quietly among themselves, started taking furious notes. Cas switched back to Firefox, where an angry Anna was furiously keysmashing to try and get his attention in IMO.

Anael: hwlker  
Anael: alkjwero  
Anael: kwjeroieoisjfiodj cAS  
Castiel: STOP there are no SOUND notifications anna gdi  
Anael: CAS THANK THE SWEET LORD I THOUGHT YOU’D DIED  
Castiel: I almost did  
Castiel: This class is going to be the death of me. I hate it. I hate everything about it.  
Anael: Cas, you love Java.  
Castiel: Yeah, but I HATE this CLSAS I CAN’T EVEN SPELL, ANNA  
Anael: Ok well. You only have an hour left, right? And then you can come home??  
Castiel: one hour and five fucking weeks. At least there isn’t a lab. And it’s a half class. but ANNA, the teacher keeps coming around to look at our screens and I keep having to switch back to bullshit notes _that i copied from the internet_  
Anael: your life is so hard.

Cas sighed. His life _was_ hard. He’d been in school for six years, and before that he’d taken a year off after high school where he’d worked at a supermarket and played World of Warcraft in his basement suite until Gabe had marched over to his house, pulled him (literally) out of the house and forced him to pick up the pieces of his broken life.

“Your parents aren’t around and that’s hard, dude, that’s fucking terrible,” Gabe had told him that very day, with a morbid, shivering Cas sulking in the passenger seat of his little blue Jetta. “But you know what, your success is not dependent on what your parents used to do, or what they didn’t leave you with. It’s all you, dude. And I know you, I know you want more than Cub Foods’ crappy 9-5 shifts. You’re bigger than getting wasted on Fridays before a big raid. And quite frankly, our guild is bigger than you getting wasted before playing because it makes you a really shitty Draenei Priest, okay?”

And so here he was, working web design and in the last few steps before his degree, and yeah, his life wasn’t easy.

Castiel: but i’ll manage  
Anael: I was JUST about to say. hey, has Gabes mystery boy reappeared yet?  
Castiel: it’s been 1 day wtf do you think.  
Anael: he going to w/e party you and B are hitting up?  
Castiel: Gabe? Obv. Gabe lives for drunk college kids.  
Anael: Is it weird being Internet friends and also rl friends? idk any Internet people irl.  
Castiel: Yeah but you live in Texas.  
Anael: the Internet exists here, Cas. Don’t be a dick.  
Castiel: ok fine. No not weird. Me+Gabe have been friends forever.  
Anael: and always Cas and Gabe, ur handles aren’t your rl names are they?  
Castiel: You think someone named their kid Castiel?  
Anael: Hey, you live in Minnesota. All kinds of crazy things happen up there.  
Castiel: f u no but we’ve been playing games since we were like 4 so when we turned 18 we just stopped using our “mundane names”  
Anael: lemme guess. Gabe’s words.  
Castiel: u betcha.  
Castiel: oh shit  
Castiel: prof. grumpypants is back. Guess its work time for real, the 12yos are digging in their books for sth.  
Anael: Good luck. See you in-game Sat? Lucy/gang aren’t up for anything, just u/G/B/me?  
Castiel: I’ll ask, me yes for sure.  
Anael: unless u all hook up i guess  
Castiel: we can only hope  
Anael: later skater.

Cas closed Firefox when the professor harrumphed near him. This class might just be the death of him: he’d already pre-coded all of their assignments, but there was a ten percent participation grade in this class, which was bullshit. Cas could probably coast by without showing up to any of the classes anyway, but he’d figured the first few weeks he’d may as well attend. And he needed to boost his GPA from the hell of Advanced Logarithms anyways.

“Page 10, James,” Professor Who Cares droned.

“Right,” Cas muttered, and got down to work pretending he was actually trying to make his computer say “Hello, World.”

_Kill me now._

__

*

“Just pick a shirt,” Gabe said, sighing dramatically from his vantage point on Cas’s bed. Living in the dorm rooms in a community college had not been Cas’s first choice, but Gabe had put it best when he’d said that “If you live in a basement suite for too much fucking longer, you’re going to actually turn into a troll.”

“I can’t wait until December,” Cas said. He eyed the shirts he had in his hands critically: not that anyone would ever comment on his great taste in t-shirts, but just in case they did, he had to make sure he was wearing the coolest possible outfit. He was down to two: Cylon Raiders (black, classic, actually clean, the red in it matched his shoes) vs. “No, I will not fix your computer for free” (the text really said it all).

“I know, I know,” Gabe said. “One bedroom, view of the river, you can finally get a cat and begin the life as a rich, fabulous hermit we all knew you could one day have.”

“It’s gonna rule,” Cas said. “Okay, I’m going with Raiders.”

“Fucking finally,” Gabe muttered. “Let’s _go_ , B is gonna be pissed that you took so long deciding between two black t-shirts.”

“He’d be pissed anyway,” Cas said, pulling the shirt over his head. “Do you have my sweater?”

“No sweaters!” Gabe said. “If you wear a hoodie you can’t be disrobed as easily.”

Cas evaluated the situation. Easier bodily access for potential sexual situations, sure. But also then everyone at the party would be looking at his computer man arms. “Nope, hoodie,” he said, scooping his charcoal Tron hoodie from the floor. He zipped it up to just under the logo on his shirt. “Good. Ready.”

Gabe clapped him on the back as they pulled on coats and hats to step out into the already-frigid November air. “It’s gonna snow soon.”

“Transit is gonna be so much fun in the slush and ice,” Cas said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

“It will be when we’ve got whiskey running through our veins,” Gabe said, dancing around a puddle. They had to run to catch the bus, but Balthazar was the only person they knew who owned a car, and he was surely already at the party.

It was actually supposed to snow tonight, but there weren’t any clouds as far as Cas could tell. The sky was dark already: at nine o’clock, it was basically midnight. The city itself, though, was just waking up from a long day of office work and retail frenzy. Lights were strung across the trees, making the streets of downtown vibrant and bright. It would look like a winter wonderland as soon as the snow got there. The buses would slog through ice and rain like it was no big deal: experienced drivers knew how to handle a little bit of slip and slide. Well. After the first couple of days of snow, at least. Cas generally walked to school for the first week of snow just to be safe. Cas and Gabe had to stand for the first half of the bus ride, squashed up against the other commuters. Since he was a proper best friend though, Gabe offered Cas one of his earbuds. Listening to music and leaning up in your friend's personal space was the best way to travel, as far as Cas was concerned.

By the time they got off the third bus, the party was in full swing. Transferring to the express buses so they could cross over to St. Paul was always more of a hassle than it should have been and took way too long: hello, it was 2012, where was their teleportation? Cas said as much as they walked past the smokers lingering outside in the cold, into the frat house Balthazar lived, breathed, and partied in.

"Not listening, dude," Gabe shouted over the loud music.

"I said, teleportation seems like it's so reasonable," Cas repeated, for which comment he got Gabe's hand waving in his face.

"I heard you," Gabe shouted. "But you're talking about scifi and I'm trying to get drunk and laid."

"Oh," Cas said.

Gabe was scanning around, presumably looking for someone in particular. Cas waited a moment until a dude with a freshly shaved head elbowed him in the side.

"You're blockin' the door, dude," Baldy said. His red cup was tilting precariously in his hand. Cas watched as some of the beer sloshed out and landed on the linoleum. Baldy didn't notice.

"Sorry," Cas said.

The bald guy laughed and slung an arm around Cas's shoulders. "No worries, bro!! Grad 2013, woooo!!"

"Wooo!" Cas cheered back. Baldy teetered away from Cas as he chugged his beer. Cas took the opportunity to get out from under Baldy's weightlifter arm.

Gabe was nowhere to be seen: he must have found whoever it was he'd been looking for. Balthazar was already probably whoring around upstairs so Cas shrugged out of his sweater and weaved his way through the crowd. Everyone was talking loudly, some people were sort of half-dancing in the middle of the room, but mostly it was just college students in tight clothes shouting and drinking and sticking their tongues down each others’ throats. Cas grimaced as he passed a couple who were basically having sex in the hallway. Kitchen area, kitchen area, where was the goddamn kitchen in a frat house? He stopped a girl with beer in her hands and mimed drinking: she made a face at him but pointed back over her shoulder. Where she’d come from. Right.

Cas shouldered his way into the kitchen, where a bored guy was handing out cups in exchange for five dollars (a reasonable sum). There was beer just outside the kitchen and in the living room and pretty much everywhere probably. He sort of hated beer, but there was a cup on the counter that smelled suspiciously like almonds and rum. He was debating between drinking it-- if you left your drink anywhere, you were basically abandoning it. But on the other hand, it was sort of gross and there could be drugs in it. There appeared to also be a half-empty bottle of something that also smelled like rum, which again, super abandoned. Before he could make a choice, someone said: “Jimmy?”

Cas froze with his cup clutched to his chest. He recognized that voice. He could hear it pooling in the soles of his feet, gripping his ribs like a vise, shoving itself into his mouth like a gag. He cleared his throat and half-turned. “Uh, yep.”

“Uh, yep,” the man said, laughing. “Listen to this guy. Seven years out of high school and he’s still a mousy little bastard. Hey, Ed! Come check this out! It’s little Jimmy Novak!”

Cas could feel himself shrinking as a hispanic man parted the seas of the frat crowd to emerge in the kitchen. Next to him, Richard Roman looked like an imposing politician, all polished teeth and coiffed hair. Ed looked Cas up and down and nodded. “Jimmy Novak. Long time no see.”

 _Don’t show your fear._ “Yeah, wow,” Cas said, gripping his cup tighter and tighter. His hands were going to start shaking soon, and he wanted to get out of this situation as soon as humanly possible. “Has it really been seven years?”

Richard laughed. “Sure has.”

 _Ten years since you had the entire offensive line jump me and shove me in a locker._ “Weird, how time flies, huh? You, uh. You look good, Rich.”

Richard’s smile deepened. It didn’t seem to reach his eyes, not really. “It’s Dick now, actually.”

Cas nodded, trying not to let any disgust show on his face. The hand holding his sweater at his side was so sweaty he was probably leaving a palm-shaped mark on it. “Right, wow. So, what...what are you guys doing here?”

“I’m the director of student housing,” Dick said, smooth as peanut butter. “And I teach American History. Ed teaches Spanish.”

Ed didn’t smile. Cas’s smile wavered. He could remember, as clearly as it was day, that smileless face shoving him to the ground and holding him there so Richard and his pals could call him names. Did none of them seriously remember that? He couldn’t really breathe, it was like stupid Dick Roman was taking up all the air. Maybe next he’d grab the Captain Morgan’s and smash it over Cas’s skull. That would be a good party trick.

“Hola,” Ed said.

 _Me llamo Castiel. Una vez que me hizo sangrar todos los días de la semana._ “Nice,” Cas said.

“And how about you, Jimmy?” Dick asked. “Do you still work at that grocery store? What was it called, Crud Foods?”

 _Cub Foods, come on, how hard is that to remember, motherfucking Cub Foods. Everyone goes there._ “Aha, no,” Cas said. “I’m actually, uh, getting my degree in, uh,” boy was the air thick in here, Cas had to swallow every few words, was his forehead actually sweating as much as he thought it was? Yes, yes it was. “Computer programming. Um. Not here. At... a different school.”

“And yet, you’re at a fraternity party in my university,” Dick said. If Cas hadn’t seen the way Dick looked from inside the slats of a locker, he could have sworn that Dick’s smile was actually friendly. “That’s neat.”

Cas stared at Dick, who smiled back, until Cas swallowed again. His throat was still dry, how was his throat still dry?

Ed folded his arms across his chest. “We’ve got that meeting in the morning,” he said, his voice low.

Dick looked back at him and nodded. “Right. Well, it was great seeing you again, Jimmy. We’ll have to... catch up one of these days.” He lifted his hand in a casual wave.

“Adios,” Ed said.

Cas watched them go with baited breath. Shit, he needed that drink now. He dropped his sweater to the dingy kitchen floor and pulled the fridge open. The guy with the cups and the money was gone; he’d probably left during Dick’s spiel, and so Cas was free to peruse the fridge full of coke and soda water on his own. He almost dropped the red can to the floor, but caught it in his slippery hands. It took a couple of seconds to pop the tab because his hands were shaking worse than he’d originally thought. When he finally got it open, he had to take a few gulping breaths and steadied his arms on the counter as he poured. One count coke, and then over to the probable rum, one, two, three counts, why not? His life was a joke, he could drink something that was three parts liquor to one part mixer. Why fucking not.

“Ha ha, ha,” Cas muttered, swilling the liquid in his cup around before he downed it. The rum burned in his mouth and all the way down his throat, and was definitely not helped by the carbonation of the coke but he drank it all and took a deep breath before pouring himself a second. He used another third of the coke and probably way too much rum again. “Bottoms up,” he said, again, talking to himself in the kitchen of a motherfucking frat house as he drank too much alcohol way too fast.

He felt sort of wild-eyed, but also like he maybe hadn’t drunk enough. Logically he knew that a handful of shots wouldn’t hit you right away, not even if you hadn’t eaten for an hour or so, but with the image of Dick Roman’s smile burned into his retinas, he really couldn’t help but want to crawl back into his basement suite and drink until he couldn’t remember how to get up the stairs any more. In fact, he should probably, yes, drink his second drink and make himself a third and then leave.

He did that, and without even spilling anything, grabbed his sweater from the floor and weaved his way through the crowd, holding his intensely spiked cup close to his chest. Balthazar had a car. Gabe had... something. He thought he saw Gabe, actually, across one of the rooms in the house, but it might have been some other short guy with his arms wrapped around a taller guy. Really, it could have been anyone.

Cas’s glasses were flithy, he needed to clean them. But he actually really needed to find Balthazar. Because Balthazar had a car.

“Have you seen Balthazar?” he asked a girl with a pink shirt and green hair.

“What?” she asked.

“Balthazar,” Cas repeated. “Have you seen him? Yea high, blonde hair, sort of accent-y?”

“What?” she asked again, laughing. “You’re drunk!”

“It’s only been ten minutes, I cannot be drunk,” Cas shouted, but the girl was already moving on, talking with her friends, ignoring him. Fine.

He turned around, wondering where he could start looking. He stopped another girl, a second one with a group of like-haired girls. “Hey, have you seen Balthazar? My friend?”

“No,” she said.

Cas sighed, and twisted his hand in a sweater that had fallen to the floor. “Oh, shit,” he muttered, and picked it up. “Did you guys know Richard Roman was here?”

“Who?” one of the girls asked.

“Richard?” Cas said. He rolled his eyes and took a drink. “Dick. Dick Roman.”

“Ohhh,” one of the girls said. Another giggled. “I love Dick,” said a third.

“You shouldn’t!” Cas said, amid the girls’ laughter. “Did you know he tortured me in high school?”

“Wait, what?” the first girl asked. “How old are you?”

Cas blinked at her. 18 to 19, sitting in a basement drinking mountain dew until his hands started to shake. 20 to 21, finding a school that would take him in with mediocre grades and getting a job to support himself for a year or two. 23 to 24, discovering he could code websites for a shitton of money and keeping his schooling up part time, 24 to 25 to almost finish his degree. “I’m twenty-five!” he said, grinning madly at their young, 19-year-old faces. He finished his drink and cast around for another as the girls edged away from him.

There were cups littered around on shelves and tables where people had left them, probably when they’d gone off to fuck upstairs or wherever there was a remotely private area. Well, beer it was. Cas staggered over to a keg, where a blonde guy was cheering for someone else to “chug, chug, chug, woooooo, Grad 2013!!!”

Cas waved his fist in the air before pouring from the keg.

“Grad 2013!!” the blonde said.

“My life is a total waste!” Cas shouted.

The blonde just cheered when Cas chugged some of his beer. He looked like one of those stereotypical surfers from 90s films. “I’m a failure!” Cas cheered, to the slight dismay of the surfer dude.

“What? Dude,” Surfer said, a look of almost concern on his face.

“Have you seen Balthazar?” Cas asked, licking his upper lip to clear it of foam. “Regan, I mean.”

“Oh, dude, Regan Wile?” Surfer asked. “The British guy, right? He’s totally in my English class!”

“But have you seen him?” Cas asked. “He’s my ride.”

Surfer laughed. “Sure is someone’s ride,” he said. “I doubt he’ll be drivin’ any time soon though.”

“Shit,” Cas muttered. “He’s mine and Gabe’s ride.”

“Dude,” Surfer said, sympathetically. “Here.” He handed Cas a full cup of beer-- when had Cas even finished his last one? How long had it been since he’d started drinking? Was someone giving him another mixed drink or was he just drinking from the cup on a mysterious footstool? Had all party etiquette been thrown out the window?

Everything came momentarily into focus when a dude climbed on top of a table and said: “Yo, I’d like to propose a toast. To our biggest donor, yo, Dick Romannnnnnnnn!!”

Amid the cheering crowds, Cas picked up the closest cup to him and drank it all, and everything faded to black.

  
[](http://toidarian.tumblr.com/post/36052670764/so-it-just-occurred-to-me-that-i-forgot-to-give)   
_art by[toidarian](http://toidarian.tumblr.com)_  



	3. Chapter 3

_“Dude.”_

Cas sat up so quickly his head started spinning like a rolodex. “Circumference is the diameter of a circle times pi,” he got out. He had just enough presence of mind to roll away from the dirty sneakers before retching into a prickly bush. His stomach was on fire, and Cas threw up for a short eternity, floating on momentary adrenaline as he coughed and spat.

“Hey, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m sort of looking for someone --”

Cas fell back, and wiped his forehead with his hand. “It’s an irrational number but the entire world is irrational, and when the oceans boil over they’ll still be stuck within the limits of an imperfect sphere, and to get that you need a little number called 3.14159.”

“Yeah, dude, I know pi, I mean, that’s the only class I ever paid attention in.”

Cas peeked an eye open, and through the blur he saw....

Well. A blur.

“People have been using pi since ancient Egypt,” Cas said. He was a helpful informant. “And I think I’ve thrown up the entire circumference of my stomach now.”

“Smells like it.”

Cas sighed and pushed himself to unsteady feet. “I don’t remember what happened to me,” he said, reaching out a hand to anchor himself on the nearest pair of shoulders, which happened to be very strong ones.

“Dude, your breath. Here. Extra.”

“Nope,” Cas said. “Can’t see.”

“Fuck. You were totally wearing glasses, weren’t you? Okay. Open up, Captain Nausea.”

Cas obeyed, and when a finger laid a piece of gum on his tongue, he closed his mouth around the digit.

“Dude,” Gum Giver said.

Cas chewed vigorously and held up a finger. The world was swimming but Gum Giver was his rock. He just needed to use up his universal one minute and then his breath would be fresh enough to blow in the stranger’s face. He needed to be about twelve inches away from something to be able to see it clearly on a good day, but this was a bad day so he just reached a hand around the back of Gum Giver’s head and pulled him close.

For a brief moment he saw panic in eyes the colour of a calm lake. Then confusion. Then anger. He scanned the rest of the stranger’s face and took inventory: smooth forehead, smallish eyebrows, long eyelashes, plump, pouting lips.

“Oh,” Cas said. “You’re Dean.”

“Get off, what the fuck,” Dean snapped, pushing Cas away.

Cas stepped wrong, or right, but the world spun and he felt himself falling back. What was Dean doing here? Who was Dean? And why did Cas want to kiss him so badly? Cas never wanted to kiss people. Well, not never. But the occasion was rare. It was okay: he was prepared for a different kiss: the one the concrete below him would probably deliver. Cas closed his eyes and waited for death.

Only, it never came.

He opened his eyes to see that the blurry shape (Dean) had grabbed his arm (also blurry), and that he was actually standing upright.

“Right,” Cas said. “Who’re you looking for?”

“My brother,” Dean said. He let go of Cas’s hand. “He was at this party, and I can’t fucking find him. We have to work tomorrow, that little shit.”

“Well, I don’t have my glasses,” Cas said.

“My brother’s about the size of a moose,” Dean said. “You can’t miss him.”

“Unless he’s horizontal,” Cas said.

“Uh,” Dean said. “He’d better fucking not be. He always calls.”

Cas closed his eyes and took a quick scan of the party. Drinks, drinks, Dick’s face, drinks, and in the corner of a room, a light brown head and a darker brown head entangled and -- “Definitely, definitely horizontal,” Cas said. “I think he’s with my friend.”

“Ruby?” Dean asked. “Or Meg?”

“Not ringing any bells,” Cas said. There _was_ a slight ringing in his ears though. That was weird.

“Amelia, probably.”

“Gabriel,” Cas said.

Dean frowned. Probably. Cas still couldn’t quite make out his face. He inched closer and squinted to see what Dean’s face was doing. Yep, frowning.

“Never met any Gabrielle,” Dean said.

“That’s not how you--” Cas said, cutting himself off quickly when he realized what was happening. Sam was totally sleeping with Gabe, who was totally not a girl. But Dean didn’t know that. Well. Cas was not going to be the douchebag who outed the gigantic football freak. “Uh, yes. Anyway, I’m looking for someone, too. Balthazar. He’s my ride.”

“I hate to break it to you but everyone here is either passed out or gone,” Dean said.

“No,” Cas said. “No, no, no, no. I have... exams. And work. Fuck. Fuck my life. What did I _drink_?”

“No clue,” Dean said quietly.

“I am _so_ not sober right now,” Cas said.

“Uh, guy, you’re getting kind of close again.”

Cas sighed. “Cas.”

Dean’s perfect lips twitched, his eyebrows moving a fraction closer together. “What?”

“Cas, it’s my name,” Cas said. “Short for Castiel.”

Dean was looking into Cas’s eyes now. “Castiel? That’s your name?”

“Yup,” Cas said. “You can call me Cas though.”

“Uh huh,” Dean muttered. His eyes flickered downwards and he brought a hand up to scratch nervously at his ear before taking a step back. “Look, dude. _Cas_. If Sam isn’t present then I’m gonna kick it. You’re not the only guy who works in the AM.”

“Ante meridian,” Cas agreed. He nodded vehemently and regretted the action immediately as it sent his stomach into an increasingly horrific barrel roll.

“Woah, dude, not on the car,” Dean’s voice said from somewhere in the hazy recesses of Cas’s consciousness. He vaguely felt a hand on his shoulder turning him in some unknown direction and then it was as though he was far away from his body, watching himself throw up.

Again.

It seemed to last forever, and then the Cas in the sky stretched out in a moment of blissful peace before it started again, slamming him back into the present, where he was retching and retching until nothing more could come out of his stomach.

The ringing in his ears was worse now, a constant high-pitched sound that built until it was drowning everything else out. Light, sound, touch, smell. Cas could barely even make out the words from the muffled voice that seemed to be trying to drive itself under the ringing.

*

When you’re in an airplane, you can’t really tell which direction is up until you look outside. Your inner ears always sort of know how to tell where your head is at, but if you think too hard about it you can trick yourself into thinking up is down and the sky is just a large, untwinkling ocean.

Cas was always vaguely disturbed by that. He liked knowing where the sky was. He liked not flying away into the dark abyss of space. He’d only been in an airplane once, and it was when he was twelve and his mom was still alive and his dad hadn’t fucked off to God-knows-where. All he remembered about the trip, aside from the hotel and the fact that his mom looked more tired than usual, was looking out when he was in that plane and seeing the face of the earth, a handful of cities all laid out like dots on a map. Like toys. Ants. Something that wasn’t quite on this side of real.

“But dude. Ants are totally real. You know, they’ve got those hills and they crawl up your leg if you step on too many of them?”

Cas breathed out with some difficulty. His cheek was freezing, and when he prised open his eyes he saw blurry dots and half of his own face. “What?” he asked, pushing himself away from what appeared to be a car window. He couldn’t move too far because there was something holding him back in his seat, which he noticed when he moved around trying to figure out where he was exactly.

“Yeah, you know. Kids put them in those glass cages and they eat the dirt or what the fuck ever? I never had one but my brother did. How drunk are you, dude?”

Cas squinted, trying to make sense of the picture in front of him, but everything was dark and he couldn’t see more than six inches in front of his face. Or was it twelve? He couldn’t even _tell_. “What?” he asked again.

The guy driving jerked his head to the side, and Cas couldn’t quite make out his facial expression but he seemed to be frowning. “You don’t have, like. Amnesia, do you, dude?”

 _Dude?_ “Oh,” Cas said, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Dean. Am I in your car?”

It was Dean’s turn now. “What?”

“Vehicle that drives on the road,” Cas said, clearing his burning throat. He vaguely remembered throwing up and floating in his own body and then... nothing. “Has some doors, four wheels, an engine. You know.”

Dean was silent for a moment. “Are you describing a car to me?”

Cas licked his lips and squinted a bit harder. “Were you describing ants to me a minute ago?”

“You kept saying what, dude.”

“Yeah, well, you said what, too,” Cas muttered. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the window.

“Well. Guess we’re even,” Dean said. “Anyway. We are in my car, yes.”

“Why?” Cas asked. He definitely vividly remembered vomiting everywhere except on Dean’s car. What kind of person took someone who’d just recently been throwing up and who was basically a complete stranger into their car?

He would have sat up in the next moment except his head was already starting to hurt and the window felt so good against his temple. “You aren’t going to murder me, are you?”

Dean laughed, a sharp barking sort of sound that made Cas turn his head and stare at his blurry, dark form. They’d pass a lamp post every few feet and the lights traveling across his face were probably a sight to behold. Unfortunately, Cas was still trying to behold his stomach in check. Also, his glasses were missing. “That isn’t really an answer,” Cas said.

“No,” Dean said, chuckling quietly. “I’m driving you home. We’re almost there, too.”

Cas closed his eyes. “I know what ants are.”

“Uh, that’s good,” Dean said. “Hey, are you going to be able to walk?”

The window was cold, like a sheet of ice, and you’d think it would warm up from being in contact with Cas’s face but it was also in contact with the great wide world outside, which was probably being covered with a blanket of snow as they drove. He could vaguely hear sounds from outside the car, but Dean shaking his arm made him snap back to the present.

“What?” he asked, eyeing the hand that was still on his arm and not on the steering wheel, which was a blur of grey in the distance.

Dean sighed heavily. “Well, I asked if you were okay to walk,” he said, slowing the car and finally removing his warm, warm hand from Cas to put the vehicle in park. “But I think I got my answer.”

“Okay?” Cas asked. He thought about Richard Roman and his stupidly successful life and how here he was, _mildly_ intoxicated and being dropped off at his dorm-style apartment, as a grownup, by an _extremely_ attractive man who was probably (definitely) straight as an arrow. The apartment from which he was taking community college computer classes and from where he often stayed up until 7 or 8 in the morning farming gold and hunting dragons. “I’m fan fucking tabulous. Thanks for asking.”

Dean chuckled. “You’re welcome.”

Cas nodded. Dean looked sort of like he might be smiling, which was sort of odd. A car drove by them, and the doppler effect of its passing made Cas strangely wistful.

“So,” Dean said. “We’re here.”

“Oh,” Cas said.

“At your place,” Dean said. “If this is the right address.”

“Right,” Cas said.

“Okay, well,” Dean said. “You need help getting out?”

“No,” Cas said, but Dean reached for his seatbelt anyway when Cas fumbled to unclick the thing. He definitely hadn’t put it on himself, which meant that Dean had done it for him. Cas could feel his ears turning red and he waved Dean away, finally managing to get the seatbelt off and door open.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Cas insisted. “Really. I can walk.”

Dean looked skeptical but maybe that was Cas’s overactive imagination. “Thanks,” Cas said.

He stepped out of the car and cold air hit him in the face like the mighty Mjolnir. He tried to take one step forwards, but the normally three-dimensional plane of the world seemed to have been spun on its axis and he ended up actually taking one step sideways. He heard a sound of alarm and a handful of crunches and then Dean was at his side, under Cas’s arm, picking him off the ground.

“No, no,” Cas said, but Dean was already walking him forward on steady legs. “I can _walk_ ,” Cas pleaded vaguely. The slush sliding down past the collar of his jacket said otherwise.

“Keys,” Dean commanded. “You didn’t leave them wherever you left your glasses, did you?”

“Pocket,” Cas said, trying to make his limbs move. Dean’s neck was so much warmer than the hallway they were standing in though, so much more alive than he felt at the moment.

“Which one?” Dean asked, and then there were hands in Cas’s front right pocket probably, but he couldn’t really feel anything aside from Dean’s skin.

“Okay there,” Dean said from somewhere outside Cas’s dried-out corn husk of a body. “Cups. Nice place, by the way. Kind of small for my tastes.”

Cas was floating, on some kind of cold cloud, when someone slapped his face.

“Water,” Dean said.

Cas said: “I am just going to sit here and sleep until I die.” At least, he tried to. He imagined himself saying it, and then Dean patted him on the head and left him alone. Gabriel brought flowers for Cas’s bathroom-adjacent tombstone. Balthazar cried.

Dean probably should have slapped him again but instead Cas felt a hand at the back of his head and then water was in his mouth and he swallowed once, twice. He drank half the cup, and then his stomach made itself known again, winding itself around Cas’s intestines like some kind of cruel twist tie. Luckily, or perhaps on purpose, Cas had been deposited right beside his toilet, where he proceeded to throw up for an agonizing stretch of eternity. Someone was holding his hair back when he came to, panting like an out of shape jogger.

“No water then,” Dean said, giving Cas a warm cloth to wipe his mouth with. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

“You don’t know me,” Cas mumbled, when Dean hauled him to his feet again.

This time, he watched his apartment go by in a blur of tans until he saw his bed. It came up to meet him, covers tucked to one side and everything. Cas toed off his shoes and unzipped his jacket but it was Dean who pushed it off the rest of the way. Cas snagged the hem of Dean’s coat, feeling mildly desperate as he fell back on his bed. He didn’t want to lie in a black hole of despair, not alone.

“Don’t leave,” Cas said, aware that he probably looked like death and smelled awful and that Dean _didn’t know him_. “Please. Please don’t go. Say you won’t leave.”

“Uh,” Dean said, as Cas pulled as hard as his weak arms would allow. “Hey, hey. Okay there, cowboy, I won’t leave.”

“Please,” Cas mumbled, shifting over on his grey sheets. He held onto consciousness until Dean’s weight made his mattress dip down. The gravitational pull of the fact that Cas wasn’t quite alone sucked him down, down, into the depths of space, millions of light years away from any sun or moon but only an inch away from someone real.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only by the twin graces of Trell and Laurel is this chapter done/up. Also kazz.

There was something so delightfully comforting about waking up in someone else’s arms, a comfort that Cas had long looked to match in life. Nothing else quite compared: it was not a simple comfort, after all. There was the warmth of another body, something that told Cas’s brain that he didn’t have to work as hard to keep his own self warm; the reassurance of something solid beneath his hands and face; and the fact that beneath everything, there was someone looking out for him, someone he could depend on to stay with him and hold him tight when everything was horribly, horribly wrong.

Of course, that comfort only lasted as long as Cas’s not-quite-consciousness did. As soon as he realized that he a) had a splitting headache, b) wanted to throw up pretty badly and c) was not cuddling a long-term life partner but instead had his head buried into the chest of a _stranger_ , he froze quietly on his bed, panic settling into his every fiber.

Through his daze, Cas managed to suss a few things out. Firstly, that he was in his own apartment, which meant he hadn’t followed a stranger home and thoroughly embarrassed himself in a domicile where he couldn’t later hide behind his computer. That did, however, mean that he had to come up with a way to get the stranger out of his place so he could sit on his bed and die a slow, agonizing death.

Secondly, he realized that he was still wearing his clothes, that his clothes were _clean_ , as in, no vomit or dried up ejaculate anywhere. It also smelled more like fine leather than sex so he at least hadn’t been taken advantage of in whatever state he’d been in the night before, the details of which had yet to come clearly to his addled brain.

And thirdly, when Cas canted his head up to look at the face of his bedtime visitor, he was shocked to see that it was Dean.

 _Dean_. Not quite a stranger but still mostly a stranger. A stranger who was, mercifully, completely unconscious. Cas sent off a frantic prayer to God and then started the arduous process of prising himself out of Dean’s grip— surprisingly tight for someone that Cas was still fairly certain was straight.

He managed to wiggle out from under Dean’s arms without his head splitting in two. He had to take a moment to breathe shallowly and think desperately about not throwing up, but after a bit of work only his legs remained trapped. They were sort of shamefully between Dean’s legs, which were heavy. Really, really heavy. Bag-of-bricks heavy.

Cas propped himself up on the bed and looked at his legs. He didn’t know how heavy of a sleeper Dean was, but if he was half as heavy as his limbs, then Cas could probably liberate himself with little effort without waking Dean. Right?

“C’mon,” Cas muttered, psyching himself up. He put his hand on Dean’s thigh, gritted his teeth together, and lifted as gently as he could. His heart was pounding somewhere in the region of his throat and he kept his eyes on Dean’s face, which was slack and relaxed in sleep. There was a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and wow, his eyelashes were long.

Concentrate. A little bit more leverage and then hah! Cas’s leg was free. He put Dean’s leg down and scooted back on the bed just enough so he could step over Dean to get off the bed.

Of course, on the way, he managed to not only jostle Dean’s sleeping form but also got his foot spectacularly tangled in the sheets. Combined, this sent him crashing to the floor where he lay in a disgruntled heap of woe.

“Ow,” Cas moaned, clutching his head.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Dean said, his voice thick with sleep.

Cas forced himself to sit up, even though his stomach was practically heaving already. Dean was blinking in tired confusion on the bed. “Uh,” Cas said. “Hi. Sorry. I. I tried not to wake you?”

Dean looked adorably disgruntled. “You did _not_ succeed, dude,” he muttered. It looked like it was dawning on him that he was not wherever he usually woke up. There was that sort of muted horror that came with surprising environments.

“I don’t remember.... _most_ of last night,” Cas said, wincing a bit. He ran a hand through his hair and then desperately patted it down. “But I don’t think we slept together. If that helps.”

Dean looked around as he sat up. His face was sort of stony. Cas gulped against his own disgusting breath. “Um. I mean. We clearly _slept_ together but we didn’t _sleep_ together.”

“Right.” Dean nodded. He licked his lips and cleared his throat. “Look, I, uh. You asked me to stay. I’m not. You know.”

Cas had some idea of what _you know_ might be. “Hey, yeah, just. You probably drove me back, right?” he asked, struggling to decode the hazy blur of his memory. “Which, uh, thanks for. By the way. I have food in my sad kitchen. For an apology breakfast, or whatever. Not, like.” He swallowed. “Not like a gay breakfast or anything.”

Dean stared at him, his eyebrows high. “A gay breakfast,” he said, and then laughed.

“Ow, fuck,” Cas said, clutching his head.

“Sorry, dude,” Dean said, but he didn’t sound apologetic at _all_. “Gay breakfast. Shit. You’re hilarious.”

“Right,” Cas muttered. “Look, I’m just going to go throw up some more but you can just eat whatever and let yourself out, I guess. I’ll probably perish on my way to the bathroom.”

“That doesn’t sound safe,” Dean said. He stretched, his body a long, lean line, and smiled at Cas. Probably. Everything was still pretty blurry. He’d have to grab his emergency contacts from the counter later.

"Hey, hang on," Dean said. "Do you know what time it is? Where the fuck is my phone?" 

"Uh," Cas said, rubbing his face in a desperate attempt to make his vision correct itself. He was also hoping that the world was going to stop spinning sometime in the near future. "There’s a clock? On the bedside table."

"Ah, shit," Dean said. "Why the fuck didn't I set an alarm? I'm late, shit, okay." He basically leapt out of Cas's bed (a phrase Cas never thought he'd use about Dean) and scooped his jacket off the floor. He pulled it on and fumbled for his shoes, piled near Cas's feet. Dean grunted at his shoelaces and got up, pausing briefly with his phone in his hand. "Hey. Uh. Don't know if I'll see you again? But try not to die. And stuff." He clasped Cas's shoulder and nodded. "Right. Bye."

Cas watched Dean go. When the door slammed shut, he closed his eyes and counted to ten. "That was the most attractive person you will ever meet," he said, to the room at large.

The room did not answer. "Typical," Cas muttered. "I'm going to go throw up now."

Still no answer.

Well.

"Probably for the best," Cas muttered. "You're talking to yourself! Nicely done, Novak. Real ace job.”

*

"And then he just left?"

Cas buried his head in his hands to avoid looking directly at Balthazar's Pity Eyes (tm). "He said he was late for work."

Balthazar sighed, as heavily and dramatically as he possibly could. "Oh Cassy," he said. Every girl within a 3 mile radius swooned. Probably. "Your first one night stand and you can't even... finish the deed, so to say."

"My life is over," Cas proclaimed. He rubbed his eyes, feeling the edges of his emergency contacts against his fingers before letting his head fall down onto the table. The smooth, cool surface felt good on his forehead, like a window in an old car...

Oh. _Oh._ "Shit," he said.

Balthazar sipped his tea, earl grey, hot. He was clearly only feigning disinterest. "What, old boy?"

Cas leveled his best non-glare at Balthazar. "Well," he muttered, "I think I just remembered last night."

"Really?" Balthazar's eyebrows went up as high as Cas had ever seen them. It made him look like his forehead was about eighty years older than the rest of his face. Strange.

"I think I threw up four times in front of him," Cas said. "Four. In front of a guy who owns a classic car. An honest-to-blog Cool Guy, Balthazar."

"And he took you home after that and didn't even get laid," Balthazar said. "That's true love, chap."

"True what?" Cas asked. "Are you high? He's _straight_ , Bal."

"Right," Balthazar said. "Straight men always spoon other men that they rescued à la classic damsel in distress tale. You just need to share true love's first kiss, mark my words young Castiel."

"Yeah right," Cas muttered.

"Speaking of," Balthazar said, voice muffled by his cup. When Cas made a questioning face, Balthazar indicated that someone was about to walk through the café doors with an eloquent twitch of his eyes.

Cas turned to look at the entrance to the café, and was met with the sight of Gabe with his tongue about as far into the mouth of Dean's moose-sized brother as it could possibly go.

"So that's where he went," Cas muttered.

"Hm," Balthazar muttered. “I can see why. _Mamma mia_.”

“Don’t say that,” Cas said. “You are the worst of humanity, did you know that?”

Balthazar grinned, all of his canines showing. “I know that, love. Now, where’s _your_ tall drink of hot water?”

“What the fuck does that even _mean_?” Cas shook his head and buried his face in his arms. He didn’t need to see more of Gabe’s mouth than he had that one summer when Gabe had gotten his wisdom teeth removed, a few weeks after which they’d played a game of spin the bottle which they’d never spoken of since.

Balthazar sighed, long and hard, as he was wont to do. “Cassy, Cassy, Cassy.”

“I told him that was my name,” Cas said. “My life is a video game, but there are no respawn points and no princesses to rescue.”

“There is a princess but she’s in another castle,” Balthazar said. “But it’s okay because the castle you’re in has a truly delicious prince in it.”

“Discussing royalty, are we?” Gabe said, from somewhere in the world. “I hope you weren’t dissing me too much.”

“Why did you send your moose away?” Balthazar asked, somewhere-in-the-world-adjacent. “I’m truly disappointed.”

“He had to go placate his brother. _Apparently ___he missed work this morning because he was too busy having sex with me, but his bro covered for him,” Gabe said.

“I’ll bet he did,” Balthazar said.

Cas groaned quietly when Gabe shoved him over to make room in the booth. He felt a hand ruffling his hair and buried his face further.

“Aw, what’s up, buttercup?”

“Apparently Roman was at the party,” Balthazar said, quietly, like maybe Cas wouldn’t hear it if he whispered.

“Oh,” Gabe said. The mirth disappeared from his face, wiped away by an invisible chalkboard eraser. “ _Fuck_.”

Gabe remembered Richard Roman about as well as Cas did. They’d been neighbours and best friends for most of their lives and Richard Roman had been the leader of unholy terrorist leaders in both their middle and high schools. Luckily, they’d been just young enough to escape his wrath in middle school, but he had left in his wake a wealth of snot-nosed Richard Roman copycats who were brutally underhanded and vicious. And the teachers didn’t even seem to care what the student body did, so long as you weren’t swearing or smoking in class.

“Cas, man,” Gabe said, shaking Cas’s shoulder until he looked up. “Hey, are you okay?”

Cas looked at Gabe and thought about how Gabe had ditched him at the party. Not that he was really mad at Gabe, just, well. He’d had a shitty night and Gabe hadn’t. “I’m fine,” he muttered.

Gabe’s eyebrows shot up. “Really.”

“Really,” Cas said, rubbing a hand over his face. He needed to shave. And shower. And lie down and die. “Richard just stopped by to say hi and to remind me of how I was completely worthless in high school and probably still now, you know. The usual.”

“You’re not worthless,” Balthazar assured him. “Oh, look, a cute girl.”

“Not even worth your full attention,” Cas muttered.

Gabe had mostly gone white before, and he cleared his throat now with a little laugh. “Don’t listen to him. You’re great.”

 _Not good enough to spend an entire party with._ “Thanks,” Cas muttered.

“You’re mad,” Gabe said.

“Am fucking not,” Cas muttered. He needed to be doing something with his hands. Typing. Looking at Reddit. Killing elephants in-game. But instead, he was out of his comfort zone, in a place where he was essentially boxed in, in a booth in a coffee shop where his best friend had a normal person job and got laid and was in general a functioning human being. “I have to go. Website stuff.”

“Cas,” Gabe said, when Cas pushed past him to get out of the booth.

“Hey, it’s nothing,” Cas said, forcing a smile. “I’m fine. Really. I just have a killer headache from last night, okay? I just need some advil and to finish this coding project and I’ll be _fine_.”

Gabe didn’t look like he believed Cas at all. He said nothing more, and though Cas knew that meant he would get a stern talking-to later, when Gabe could confront him in closed quarters, at the moment Cas could not care any less than he did.

“Text me, okay?” Gabe said, trying to win an eye contact stare-off with Cas.

“Lucifer wanted to raid tonight,” Balthazar mentioned.

Gabe’s eyelids flickered briefly. “Oh,” he muttered, looking away in defeat.

“I told him we wouldn’t be up for it,” Balthazar said. “Just thought you should know he wanted to.”

“Good,” Gabe said, but his voice was already in the distance. Cas left the café before either of them could say anything more, a slightly harsh but necessary act. He didn’t need to be detained by 3 million goodbyes, he needed to go home and drown his sorrows in energy drinks and the Star Trek reboot.

He had all of later for fine.

*

All Cas had needed to do was get home. He’d had _one_ job, and he’d fucked that up, too.

You’d think that getting from Point A to Point B would be simple. A little freerunning, some transportation-hitching, interacting with the bus system and voilà, arriving at your destination with -5 heat, +5 hunger and +10 loneliness.

Instead, Cas had rounded the corner from the café and run straight into a cross-beam. He had originally intended to cut across the street in order to avoid the series of long-lasting stoplights, but of course, he ended up in a heap on the ground at the edge of what appeared to be a construction site, with an even more splitting headache than he’d arrived with.

“ _Cas_?” a deep, incredulous voice asked when Cas blinked his eyes open. It cut through the din of machinery and concerned construction worker voices and made Cas sit up with a groan.

“You know this fella, Dean?” a different, deeper voice asked.

“Yeah, uh. No, but. Sort of.”

“Well. You tend to him. I’m gonna go kill whatever idjit didn’t stop this little guy from wanderin’ into our site. Hey, make sure he doesn’t... you know.”

“Got it. Hey, Cas?”

“This is my nightmare,” Cas groaned, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eyes. Could you give yourself a lobotomy accidentally? He pulled his hand away quickly just in case. “I’m leaving. Oh, shit.”

Cas looked around furtively and cleared his throat. He was no longer outside. He was inside some kind of post-apocalyptic tent thing. It was cold and damp and contained a desk and a worried Dean. “Well, okay. I _would_ leave but I don’t know where I am.”

“Oh,” Dean said, laughing nervously. He rubbed the back of his neck with a gloved hand. “We’re in Bobby’s office. Temp office, that is. It’s really just a tent, I guess.”

“How did you get me in here without me knowing?” Cas asked, prodding at the side of his head. Pain. Pain. _Pain_.

“Dude,” Dean said. Cas winced when he poked his head again. Definitely a spot of pain there. “Quit that.”

Cas frowned but pulled his coat back together. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, man.” Dean shook his head like he was mildly exasperated with Cas. Or maybe extremely exasperated. After all, he’d had to deal with an unconscious Cas twice in one day. Twice! “What are you doing here?”

“You know me, I like to live on the edge,” Cas muttered. Could he escape now? Let his dignity fall into the pits of whatever thing the construction crew were building here and just become a creature clothed only in his own shame?

Dean’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t know about that last part,” he said, and though there was a full layer of grime on his face, Cas could see that the tips of his ears were going pink.

“What?” Cas asked. This was like what had happened in the car. Was Dean reading his mind?

“Dude, no,” Dean said, with a smile. “You’re talking out loud, man.”

“Oh,” Cas said. Well. That explained a _lot_.

“But yeah, definitely keep your, uh, clothes on,” Dean said. “It’s fucking freezing outside.”

Dean’s nose was red, too. “Uh huh,” Cas said. “It was a metaphor, but thanks. Good advice. So, um. Can I?”

Dean blinked slowly and every last bit of exposed skin Cas could see turned a bright flushing pink. Cas shook his head and snorted. “Not get undressed,” Cas said. “I mean. Can I leave?”

“Oh,” Dean said. “I think, uh, we’re waiting for lawyers? Or something. Bobby wanted me to get you to, like. Not sue. But I would understand if you wanted to.”

“Sue?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, you know. You hit your head and all?” Dean asked. “You might not remember that, you were sort of out cold there. Jim did a shitty job of checking his perimeter before he swung that beam around. Usually we’ve got fences and cones and guys around the bit where you cut into the site but I guess they took the day off.”

Cas did have a cousin who was a lawyer, but the main branch of his family, traditional to a fault as they were, had basically disowned him after his parents’ divorce. He was Exhibit A: Their Greatest Shame. “I doubt I would win in a lawsuit,” Cas said.

Dean shrugged. “Maybe.”

“You’re the muscle they sent to convince me not to sue, then?” Cas asked, piecing together whatever Bobby had sent Dean in here for.

“I guess,” Dean said, shifting uncomfortably.

Cas nodded. He licked his lips and cleared his throat. Again. He was on the verge of something and anxiety was bubbling up in his stomach. But you only lived once. “Well. I don’t actually respond well to intimidation.”

“Hm.” Dean looked over his shoulder at the flap of the tent. Like he was a cornered animal. “What, uh. What do you respond well to?”

Cas cast around for his gloves. They were in his pocket. Right. He felt like he was going to explode, leaving messy meaty bits around the tent. “Coffee,” he said. “Food. Civility, basically.”

“You saying I ain’t being civil?” Dean asked.

“No, you are,” Cas assured him.

“So, what.” Dean squinted, folding his arms across his chest. “What you’re saying then, is... is that if someone doesn’t give you food and coffee... you’re going to sue.”

“ _You’re_ saying that,” Cas said.

“ _You’re_ trying to blackmail me,” Dean said. “No, you’re trying to blackmail the construction company I work for.”

“Not really,” Cas said.

“Then what?” Dean asked.

Cas closed his eyes. If Dean wasn’t getting his intricately layered hints about asking him on a date, then there was no way he wasn’t straight. “Never mind,” he muttered.

Dean was silent. Cas glared at his own shoes.

“You’re trying to get me to ask you to dinner,” Dean said.

“No,” Cas said. “Well. Maybe.”

Dean was silent, and silent, and silent. If this was a fantasy novel, or even a sci-fi one, Cas would have suspected that something had risen from the construction site and eaten him. Unfortunately, this was real life, and —

“Yeah, okay.”

“What?” Cas asked, accidentally making direct eye contact with Dean. “Wh— uh yes. I mean, uh.”

“Dinner,” Dean prompted. He looked nervous, like maybe he expected someone to sneak up on him and clap shackles around his wrists. “Friday.”

Cas nodded mutely. Dean scratched his forearm and nodded back.

“It’s a date.”


End file.
